


The Intervention Of Wolfman (Or, How Carlos Learned To Hate The Wolf)

by Larry_say_relax



Category: The Libertines, Wolfman - Fandom
Genre: Alcohol, Implied Drug Use, M/M, Self Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-10
Updated: 2013-03-10
Packaged: 2017-12-04 19:51:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/714443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Larry_say_relax/pseuds/Larry_say_relax
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carlos doesn't know why he goes to see Pete play. He knows he regrets it though.</p><p> This takes place circa 2004.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Intervention Of Wolfman (Or, How Carlos Learned To Hate The Wolf)

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry, this is a bit weird. Inspired by a live version I’d been listening to/watching of ‘Wolfman’.

  
Carlos had had far too much to drink. He hadn’t meant to, it had just sort of happened. He’d been sat in a pub all the way across the city from the filthy hole in the wall that Pete and Co. were rumored to be playing this evening. This was not an accident, of course it wasn’t. He’d sat there in a dark corner, keeping his head down to avoid recognition. It wasn’t necessary he’d reasoned, most of the people who would have recognized him were most likely on their way to Peter’s little trap of a pub or else already there, hoping to catch a glimpse of their star before he took the stage. But he wanted to be sure, so he barely made eye contact with the man tending bar, simply placed the bills before him and mechanically worked his way through far too many drinks.

  
He wasn’t sure when he changed his mind, but at some point he decided that it would actually be a good idea to head across town and peek in on old Peter. After all, Peter wouldn’t even know. He’d be too busy onstage or too blasted to notice. Carl stumbled a little as he moved from his seat toward the door and decided he’d best be taking a taxi.

  
It was one of those sorts of places that he’d loved not all that long ago. Sticky floors, so dark you can hardly see, graffiti on the walls so thick and layered it was nigh impossible to read. Never mind the toilets—it seemed you could catch something filthy just from sitting at the bar itself. The scent of cigarettes was so thick it’s like being strangled, and that’s if you actually smoked. He entered the place and moved right for the bar, against his better judgment. _  
gonna need this…_ he thought, then headed toward the back again, not wanting to be seen. It seemed he might actually manage this—all focus was on the stage where Peter was spinning and flailing like a drunken seizure incarnate, his words coming too fast and too garbled to be understood.

  
Carlos leaned back against the wall with crossed arms, the exposed brick supporting him, a fag dangling from between his lips. The song had ended and the cheers were more like keening screams. In his state the entire scenario reminded him eerily of some contemporary rendering of Dante’s Inferno—the tables in the back were adorned with flickering candles and the lighting on the stage flashed scarlet, orange, yellow, scarlet. Black lined eyes and emaciated bodies dominated the crowd and the fag smoke crawled overhead like a ghostly haze.

  
Carlos could smell clove scented smoke, sickeningly sweet, cloying. It was making him feel a little bit nauseated. He decided to move forward—maybe if he moved the clove smell wouldn’t follow him. He made his way past the tables, down three steps and up to the back of the crowd. By this point he was beyond caring whether or not anyone recognized him. He downed the rest of his drink and considered returning to the bar for another.

  
His focus was pulled back to the stage as a sharp howl cut through the sound of the crowd. The first dark strains hit him as a familiar shape materialized out of nowhere on the stage. Peter was no longer the focus as Wolfman seemed to glide to the edge, stretching out his arms. Shirtless, Holocaust thin, leper white, bones that somehow looked strong as steel and roped with veins; shadowed eyes and cheekbones cutting through the darkness. Another howl went up and Carlos couldn’t tell if it was coming from the stage, the crowd, or both.

  
Carlos’ saliva soured as the drums began to throb with a feral voodoo eroticism and the crowd began to move, reach, twist in perfect synchronicity like a pale, sick, many tendriled heart.

__

Wolfman…it's givin’ me the hump, mannnnnn

  
  
Peter in the background, screaming, keening wolflove/hate, bending double, mouth stretched wide, eyes black, shark-dark and staring at everything and nothing.  
  


_jump when you say jump, mannnnn..._

  
  
Carl began to slowly back away as the fear spread through him, cutting like a cold knife through his bowels, his belly, his heart, his lungs.  
  


  
_This feels like suffocation._

_This feels like drowning._

  
He stumbled against a step and smacked the back of one hand painfully against the hard wood back of a chair, catching his balance somehow. His heart was beating too fast-far too fucking fast- and he felt rather than saw the people around him recognizing him in the dim light. Awareness, spreading like a ripple in a lake, heads turning, eyes clocking him, moving lips angling to inclined heads.

  
This was not a social call.

  
He did not feel welcome.

  
Carlos was really feeling sick now but he’s wasn’t sure why—couldn’t be sure why he felt as though he’d stumbled upon something rank and dark and sick, discovered something rotting that breathed a beguilingly sweet stench. It was as if he’d accidentally walked into a witches coven, as if he’d unwittingly entered the lair of something dark and bad and dangerous.

  
Wolfman and Peter were facing each other now, moving in close and Carlos blanched as skeletal fingers slid up Peter’s chest and splayed at the base of his neck. He felt a shock of absolute fury- jealousy he’d thought was dead—as the two finished the song, birds of a feather now, slicked with sweat, feverish eyes burning holes into eachother. Wolfman's tongue snaked its way between Peter's lips and the crowd went into a frenzy of stomping and shrieking.

  
Carlos stumbled blindly for the toilets and slammed the cubical door behind him, collapsed on the lid of the commode, buried his face in shaking hands.

 __  
You stupid fucking fuck, you fucking stupid tosser…why the fuck did you come?  
Carlos tried to even out his breathing. He lit a fag. He thought about the last time he saw Wolfman, the last time he and Peter were in the same room together.

  
A party at Pete’s then-flat, one Carlos had accidentally crashed. Of course he hadn’t known about it—why would he? The people around him who’d known had kept quiet about it as they did with all things Peter-related whenever Carlos was within earshot. He’d knocked on the door and when it had opened Wolfman was behind it, not Peter. He had appraised Carlos slowly and with a certain arrogance, then shrugged and walked away leaving the door hanging open. He’d settled back down on Peter’s sofa (the sofa Peter and Carlos had carried home together at 4 am from some one’s rubbish heap, drunk and laughing, ecstatic that they had a ‘new’ couch that didn’t stink of mold. How long ago? A lifetime…). Three woman snaked their limbs around him as he reposed- each of them the perfect picture of the ending stages of tuberculosis- ash grey skin, pale lips, eyes sunken into bruised sockets.

  
Peter was nowhere to be found downstairs so Carlos made for the stairs, stepping over a boy curled up on the bottom step who didn’t raise his swollen eyes as he rubbed and scratched at the skin on his arms, mottled and bruised as the clouds before a storm. He'd found Peter in his bedroom. He and four girls were kneeling on the bed, naked. They were slicing themselves with razor blades, shallow cuts, smearing each other with blood. They were so high they didn’t notice him standing there. The implications of what they were doing hit him and he retched with fear and shock. A hiss in his ear startled him and he stumbled forward, his hand clapped to his mouth. Cold fingers gripped his other wrist, steadying him. He straightened and the voice murmured into his ear-

  
“You can go, now. He’s with us now”. Carl had pushed Wolfman hard and run. He'd bolted down the stairs and out the door into the humid night. He'd stopped at the first pub he found and woke in a shop doorway the next morning as the sun was coming up. That had been almost five months ago.

  
He stood now, on shaking legs and took a deep hard breath. He exited the cubical and the gents, slipping out of the pub the same way he’d come in. All he wanted was to sleep, to forget about this, all of it. He wanted to forget that the past year had happened. He wanted everything to be the way it used to be. He began the long walk home as a misting rain began to fall, camouflaging his hot aching tears.


End file.
